These two pics where straight out the camera, the church is 59 meters high
to that cross,
first one is at full tele second one at full wide , and yes the lens hood was twisted a little, beginners mistake
Forgot to say , no tripod or any support used

Hello Gary , and thanks Guus for the info from Digitalstreet , yes in EXR auto, the camera out of the box memorycard and NiMh batteries inside, i just set the sharpness to "hard" and underexposed 2/3 , that is so far the only setting i had time for to test out, the rest seemed fine fo the moment.
I will ask maybe in the near future after someone's settings,
From the first pictures i have taken with this HS-20, the colors where just right as you see them yourself.
It is a shame that my D90 has its own mind about some colors like violet and deep red, no matter wich setting or white balance.
For real speed shots like kids on a "mery go round" ( ?) the DSLR is much faster.
Cons : the new menu is crap ! the old from the HS-10 was much more clear ( to me), and for the video and zooming, i tried a piece today, mmmm no , there is work to be done, even after a moment it would not focus anymore..

I have not had any focusing issues of my own. Also I set the sharpness to standard as I find hard is really too tonally hard for what I do and looks like I applied a program like noise ninja etc to an image.

It seems to me that a key to keeping sharpness at 30x zoom is obviously a balance of ISO, shutter and aperture within shooting parameters. This would explain slightly blurred HS10 and HS20 samples - which are not the cameras fault but the learning curve of the photographer / available conditions.

But I am most impressed with the zoom.

Im currently thinking that a HS20 will serve me well (fingers crossed it will be a present) as a main workhorse and flexible tool, while the new Pentax models with interchangeable lenses might just satisfy my lust for extremely low depth of field shots - all at a moderate price for an amateur. exciting times!

Yes unsharp mask is a tool in a postprocessing program (for instance Paint Shop) which allowes you to set the sharpness exactly as you like it. I prefer this approuch above the in camera settings for sharpness because you can finetune the sharpness better in that way I think. A neutral tone setting in combination with the EXR setting gives you the best variety in contrast I think. Also very useable for a little adjustment later on.The contrast setting was my main struggle with the HS10. The contrast setting in JPEG was way too harsh. Had to use RAW to put that right.The HS20 is a big improvement in JPEG contrast setting.